There have been marketed multi-functional portable computing devices such as iPhone and iPad both made by Apple Inc., other tablets, mobile phones, and the likes.
Such computing device today has one or more processors of great performance and one or more memories in which computer programs and media assets can be stored. The computer programs include a media player and a video game. The media asset includes music data, movie data, and video game data. For example, when a user executes a media player in the computing device to play the music data or video data, the user can enjoy music and movies. For example, when a user executes a video game program in the computing device to play the video game data, the user can enjoy playing the video games as if the computing device were just like a game console.
However, a user may feel less excited through playing such media assets in the portable computing device than through playing them in a typical desktop television set or home audio system, because the portable computing device typically has a smaller local display and/or a more inferior loudspeaker than the typical television set or home audio system.
An approach of sending graphics or video from a portable computing device to a remote display device such as a desktop television set by way of some kind of communication protocol upon playing the media assets may be helpful. A typical television set has a display that is larger than the local display of the portable computing device. Accordingly, such approach may enable a larger screen of the played media to be displayed, and thus may make the user feel more excited. An example of such approach is disclosed in the international patent publication No. WO2004/082284 entitled “Methods, Devices, and Systems for Displaying Information from Remote Electronic Device”. Furthermore, if those skilled in the art could apply such approach of sending video to sending music, it might make the user to feel more excited by enabling music to be played through a loudspeaker of the home audio system.
However, such approach of sending video or music from a portable computing device to a remote appliance requires the media assets to be stored in the local memories in one or both of the portable computing device and the remote appliance.
Therefore, the present invention addresses an approach of streaming media assets over network.